10.8.11

Google Plus To Fuel Real-Time Search

Google, which recently ended its contract with Twitter to help power its real-time search function and subsequently suspended real-time search, is working to bring back the service by using data from Google+ and other services. Google Fellow Amit Singhal shared these plans at a recent panel about search moderated by Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan.

Real-time search is essentially a tool for users to find out what people are saying about a specific search term at any given moment. Prior to Google shutting down it down, when a user chose to search in real time, the results of that search type would display tweets and messages like public Facebook posts about a keyword in real time.

Now that Google is starting to incorporate Google+ results into real-time search, this gives even more weight to Google+’s potential for business marketing. Google+, which had 25 million visitors within its first month, is also growing quickly, boasting about 20 million users since its June 28 launch. Some experts say that the site’s integration into other Google products such as Gmail is contributing to its success.

Further adding to the popularity of Google+ is its potential to be a powerful marketing channel. With the integration of Google+ posts into other products such as real-time search and social search through the +1 button, Google+ is poised to be a valuable tool, not only for social optimization, but for search optimization as well.

That’s why now is an important time to begin using a personal Google+ profile to promote your business online and stay posted on the company’s plans to launch pages for business.

To learn more about Google search straight from keepers of the search engine’s algorithm – Amit Singhal, Ben Gomes and Matt Cutts – you can view the panel this news originated from on YouTube:

Have you used real-time search to find out what people are posting online at any given moment? What do you think about Google incorporating Google+ posts into their different products?